Urban Cycling

Easy Come, Easy Go

Two friends head out for a long, slow, aimless ride around San Francisco and find that when your only destination is the journey itself, you always get where you’re trying to go

luke dittrich

(Photo by Vance Jacobs)

We begin the day like we usually do: competing. We push ourselves, sprinting away from Vance’s home, standing on the pedals to race up the first few hills, breaking a quick sweat. But here’s the thing: That kind of riding makes no sense in San Francisco. The city, with its heavy traffic and its stoplights, is designed for stop-and-go riding, not go and go. The same is true of our bikes. The loaner I’m ­pedaling is an eight-speed cruiser of indeterminate brand that feels as heavy as a moped and is notable mainly for the chunky metal basket over the front wheel. It’s missing only a bouquet of daisies and a much prettier rider to complete the look it seems to be going for. Vance is on a swankier bike, a Moots Comooter, the priceyness of which, in practice, detracts from its utility, since locking it up to anything short of an armed guard would make me anxious.

But by lunchtime we’re no longer racing. Instead, we’re cruising slowly through the Mission District, pretty much drowning in slow-pour coffee shops, when Vance announces we’re only a block from one of his favorite taco joints. Soon our bikes are locked up and we’re lounging on a sunny little side patio. By our third bowl of chips I’m agonizing over whether to have a second margarita ­picante. It features a base of el Jimador tequila, a generous squeeze of lime, and a dash of red-chili-pepper-infused vinegar. Goes down perfect with pork-belly tacos. Vance catches my eye and smirks.

“Tough gig,” he says. Vance is one of my best friends. We’ve plunged into all sorts of adventures for a dozen years now, most of them involving physical or psychological extremes. We’ve gotten lost kayaking in Louisiana’s Atchafalaya Swamp, run out of water while hiking in the Navajo Nation, and braved an amateur porn shoot in downtown Atlanta. (Long story, that one.) We tend to do things that push both of us to the limits of our comfort zones.

And then there’s today. How did we end up on this, a languid two-wheeled excursion to the intersection of Sloth and Gluttony? Pretty simple: Vance lives here, and I’m passing through town. We needed time to catch up, and hanging around his house in Noe ­Valley was out of the question because Vance’s wife just had a baby. We had the idea to ride, not in any serious way, but in the way people ride now across weekends like this one in cities all over North America: on sturdy, upright, gracefully plain bikes, in no hurry and with no significant agenda, in meaningful pursuit of meaningless fun. Two bikes, two friends, one city.

San Francisco is an empty slate for both of us, cycling-wise. Vance has done an Ironman on his Cervélo and is obsessive about his gearing and wattage, but he does most of his rides on the long open roads north of the city. Me, I hardly know the city, but I’m thinking of moving to the West Coast and am eager to explore.

As a further disincentive to ride hard, there are all the distractions we’re finding along the way, distractions that seem ­determined to make mincemeat of any mettle-testing gauntlet we might want to throw down. Distractions like these margaritas.